Wednesday 28 September 2011

House of Wax (2005)

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Year:2005
Country of origin:Australia / USA
Director:Jaume Collet-Serra
Genre:Dull horror remake
Starring:Paris Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt
Rating:1/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397065/
Tagline:Prey. Slay. Display.
Favourite line:None worth mentioning

House of Wax is a name that should bring a smile to the lips of any cult cinema fan. The 1950's original was an early example of 3D, directed by André De Toth, a man with only one functioning eye, meaning that he could never see the movie in the same way as his audiences.
Skip forward 52 years, and we get a remake directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, a man who had never shot a movie before, and whose follow up film would be Goal 2: Living the Dream.
Yikes!

The plot:
Six friends are on a long distance car trek to Louisiana to watch an American football game, the daft sods. Along the way, the inevitable car trouble strikes and they wind up in a sinister and strangely deserted town called Ambrose, whose sole point of interest lies in the House of Wax that seems the centre-piece of the place. Through a series of MacGuffins so implausible you may want to drown yourself in boiling wax, the intrepid team discover that all is not as it seems at the waxwork and that, is they are not very, very careful, they may well become the next set of exhibits.....

Yeah, it's about as predictable as runny bowels after a very hot curry, only much more painful to endure.
See, never mind the original, this was done with much more panache, much more style, much more, you know, wit seventeen years earlier in Hickox's wildly demented Waxwork. But that would be ok if this had any class about it at all and, frankly, it just doesn't.
The scripting is woeful.
The acting shoddy, at best, and the lead characters about as likeable as a severe bout of Trench Foot.
Paris Hilton appears to be the main star 'pull' and, trust me, she was far more likely to win a gong for her performance sucking that guys cock in night vision than through this performance.
Boring.
Derivative.
Unimaginative.
Shit.
Avoid.

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